Extended Data Fig. 3. Evaluations of FDR (mdFDR) and power in identifying DA taxa in (a) continuous or (b) binary exposure.

Synthetic datasets were generated using the PLN model¹⁸ based on the mean and covariance estimated from the QMP dataset²³. The X-axis shows the sample size (or sample size per group for the categorical covariate), and the Y-axis shows the FDR (mdFDR) or power. Each panel title designates the proportion of true DA taxa. The depicted metrics represent mean values ± standard errors (indicated by error bars) derived from 100 simulation runs for each setting. This visualization underscores the superiority of ANCOM-BC2-both with and without the sensitivity score (SS) filter-in consistently preserving minimal FDR or mdFDR while attaining satisfactory power, outpacing all other assessed methods.